It’s only a short 4,000-mile hop from Fiji to Perth.
With Perth starting in a month, we’re seeing hometown media celebrating entrants. Fiji will send two, including Mereoni Vibose, who turned 65 in April and holds national open records in the discus (47.76 or 156-8 1/4) and old javelin (53.18 or 174-5 3/4). The other Fijian is M40 steepler Noel Singh. A story in Fiji Times reported that Mereoni “received the news of the competition through an old friend and former Australian javelin champion, Mary Thomas…. Since last year, she has been training at her village in Raiwaqa in Nadroga. She said she had been training using a javelin and a discus, but for shot put she had to resort to getting a rock from the Ruwailevu River which ran beside her village for her training.” She told the paper: “All of the first three events’ equipments I have, but as for the hammer throw I will try it during the competition.” She expects to finish in the top 10. I hope she goes for the gold!
Mereoni displays some of her old awards. She’ll seek new ones in October.
Paul Greer (left) helps conduct elections at San Diego-Imperial USATF meeting.
The San Diego-Imperial USATF Association held its annual elections Wednesday night at Road Runner Sports, a megashoe store. I attended even though I’m a member of the Southern California Association (in order to join the Striders). In any case, I learned that nobody has taken over for Steve Kleinstuber as Masters Track Committee chair. He’s served this role for some time — which required him to be meet director of the annual Chuck McMahon Memorial Meet. He put in his service and called it quits this year, however. So now San Diego-Imperial is looking for a successor. One of the perks is that the association pays your way to the annual USATF meeting, which is in Orlando this year (where Rio Olympic coach and Tracktown boss Vin Lananna is likely to be elected USATF president). Interested? Write new San Diego-Imperial President Marco Anzures at president@sandiego.usatf.org. BTW, I’m told that the McMahon meet director might be a paid gig in future years.
Ontario meet maven Doug “Shaggy” Smith said Tuesday on Facebook that Tampere, Finland, has dropped out of the running to host the 2020 WMA outdoor worlds. “That leaves Gothenburg, Sweden, and Toronto in a one-ballot vote in Perth on Sunday, October 30th,” Doug says. I haven’t confirmed the Finnish finish yet, but I trust Doug on this. At the start of the year, four cities were potential bidders (including Bogotá, Colombia). The Toronto 2020 site (which can be read in dozens of languages, including Esperanto) is a model bid site. For example, it posts technical details on the main stadium at University of Toronto. The Swedish 2020 bid site is basically a PDF and is scarcely more than a tourism brochure. But at the Perth General Assembly, European delegates will outnumber North/South Americans and Oceania reps. So it could still go to Gothenburg (aka Göteborg). Doug is playing nice. He writes: “2022 is the 45th anniversary of the 2nd World Championships that were held in Gothenburg. Seems fitting that they get that one :-)” Since 2018 worlds will be in Spain, it only seems fair that another hemisphere get 2020.
Here’s info from the Gothenburg 2020 bid site, which isn’t easy to find.
Our M60 psychiatrist friend Stephen Peters won the 100, 200 and 400 over the weekend at British masters nationals. See results here. Steve’s margins of victory were even more impressive — 12.42 to 13.09 for runner-up Simon Barrett, 24.90 to 26.55 for silver medalist Ian Broadhurst and 58.23 to Simon’s 60.87. An even crazier set of results was the men’s pole vault, where the M50 winner (Mark Johnson at 4.20) beat the winning heights of M45 (4.00) and M35 (3.80). Admittedly, the turnout was weak by U.S. standards. But kudos to M40 100 winner Esmei Ossai on his 10.97 and M70 champion Victor Novell at 13.75. Alfred Hermes in Germany reported two Eurovets records set at BMAF: M80 Tony Bowman in the 80-meter hurdles (14.93) and W65 Caroline Marler in the 400: 72.37. More details at Athletics Weekly.
A tradition at Senior Games in Pasadena, San Diego and elsewhere is the Grandparent-Grandchild Relay, which usually involves kids running 50 meters and touching hands with Grandma or Grandpa, who race back to the start. But at Sunday’s San Diego Mesa College meet, a 3-year-old named Ellie stole the show. She started in a down position (as she had seen some relatives do) and tagged up with her great-grandfather George Larch-Miller, 90. She didn’t stop, though. She chased Grandpa back to the finish line. The meet was great, again, with temps in the high 70s and light winds. Willie Banks had three close misses at an M60 American record 1.75 meters (about 5-9). Photos of him and other stars of the meet are on my Google Drive. So check them out, and please credit Ken Stone / masterstrack.com if used on social media or published. No charge. I’ll share meet results when I get them.
George Larch-Miller took last in Grandparent-Grandchild Relay but won the most hearts with teammate Ellie.
John Seto is throwing a wider net to fund mastersrankings.com. He’s looking for corporate sponsors. He also writes: “The [$25 a year minimum] membership program has yielded results so far ($39.3K) which covered D&O plus liability insurance in early August plus paid some of the owed license fees. My goal was $75K raised by the end of September and I am still optimistic that it is possible – it will mostly come from this fundraising effort as membership income has tapered off as expected. The operations side is going extremely well (using the primary goal of inserted performances as the metric). I’ve been working on process and software to ensure scalability and the biggest impact area is 95%+ complete. 25-30k inserted performances was a good month for 2015 (which would require hundreds of hours to convert and process performances). Almost 73k performances have been inserted since the newsletter less than 2 weeks ago.”
Earl’s jumping skills can be traced to this event.
Earl Fee wrote the bookon becoming a masters track champion (actually two or three). Now at M85, he’s writing a new chapter in his storied career — becoming a high jumper and long jumper. Gotta love it. He cleared 1.05 (3-5 1/4) at Michigan nationals. His local paper tells how and why: “At 87, the Mississauga runner has set more than 20 Masters world records, and he’s now giving high jump a try after last competing in the event almost 70 years ago. He was encouraged to give it a shot by his friend and karaoke partner, Gary Lubin.” Earl said: “He’s one of the best high jump coaches in Canada, so he kept going after me, saying I should do it. I thought it didn’t look too difficult. My first practice session, I was getting close to the Canadian record, so I had some natural ability and it was coming back to me.” Here’s video from Sept. 11 meet in Toronto:
M95 sprint star Charles Eugster is focus of a BBC story and video, and he’s as funny as he is fast. (He holds several sprint WRs.) “Even at 87, I wanted an Adonis body, in order to turn the heads of the sexy, young 70-year-old girls on the beach,” he says. “I wanted a six-pack, but my coach said that we must first work on my bottom, which she said was a catastrophe.” The story says Charles “attributes his longevity to the fact that — bar a pause in his early 80s — he has never really stopped working, and in his late 80s decided to focus on his fitness. He worked as a dentist until he was 75, and is now an athlete who trains three days a week, holds the indoor 200 and outdoor 400 sprint world records for men over 95.” Now 97, he’s entered in the 100, 200 and long jump at Perth worlds, where he’ll have plenty of W70s to impress. But first he’ll have to beat two Aussies in both sprints. Go get ’em, Charles! Break some records — and hearts.
According to Mike de Silva on Facebook, 808 athletes have entered British masters nationals Sept. 17-18 at Alexander Stadium in Birmingham — the second-highest turnout ever. He adds: “More than 100 volunteer officials will arrive at the Stadium at 08.30 on Saturday and most will work through to 19.00. 08.30 to 18.00 on Sunday. Some will work even longer, double checking results before publication, prepping for the next day etc.” Results will be posted here. Because of the time squeeze, athletes were warned: “Before you [start getting] heated and complain about your frustrations, due to matters beyond our control, please consider the following: Some of you will be doing three field events in one day, so a delay in one will mean you could miss the start of the next one.”
BMAF nationals are being held later in the year than normal. but so are worlds.
Letsrun.com and IAAF have posted tributes toBernard “Kip” Lagat, saying his 3000 runner-up showing a few Saturdays ago in Berlin was the last track race of his career. “I have no regrets,” Kip told SPIKES, which said: “The 41-year-old is reflecting on two decades of international running during which he has won a whopping 13 global medals. Maybe his most impressive feat is he still looks the same as when he started out – some might say even better. ‘In my university pictures, I look way older than I look now, it’s awesome!’” Given his penchant for targeting masters records, I can easily see him coming back at 45 or 50 to take down WRs at several distances. The money isn’t there, but his legend is always worth padding. For the record, WMA (whose site is still down, sigh) lists him as holding eight outdoor and five indoor age-group records. The best may be his M40 indoor mile of 3:54.91. Don’t count him out.
Ken has followed track as an athlete, writer and web-master since the late 1960s, and saw most sessions of track and field at the 1984 Los Angeles and 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He also attended the 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 Trials, the last three as a blogger and Patch correspondent. [More...]
September 22, 2016
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